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New Books to BPLD July 2026 |
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Choke Point: A Thriller
by Brad Thor
#1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor thrills with his new summer blockbuster starring Scot Harvath. A devastating series of bombings tears through Bangkok. Scores of American citizens are dead. The attacks send shock waves around the world. As global assistance pours into Thailand--including the FBI's famed Evidence Response Team--the president of the United States quietly prepares a plan B: Scot Harvath, America's top spy, trained to operate outside the law and probe the dark corners others can't...or won't. But the bomber Harvath is pursuing isn't a terrorist. He's something far more dangerous--one of ours. Meanwhile, in Washington, a former United States Marine is being hunted--and he has no idea why. Desperate for answers, he turns to the one person he still trusts--his ex-fianc e, a rising star in the White House. The problem is, she isn't sure she can trust him. As Harvath closes in on the bomber, a devastating truth begins to emerge. China has quietly deployed its most elite intelligence unit to Thailand. Their objective: to ignite chaos, trigger a military coup, and seize control of a narrow but critical piece of land, one that could give Beijing a decisive advantage. If the plan succeeds, Beijing will secure a key gateway between two oceans, eroding American naval dominance and tipping the balance in any war between the world's great powers. China will control the ultimate geopolitical choke point.
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Close Relationships with Strangers
by Krista Diamond
Close Relationships with Strangers follows a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who moves to Los Angeles to become a paparazzo and in the process loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality. Reviled by celebrities and the public, Ben is one of the last remaining paparazzi scouring the streets of Los Angeles. Amateurs with camera phones, social media, and a lack of bonafide stars have slowly killed a once essential role in the Hollywood apparatus. Jack Whitlock is one of the last remaining A-listers, and Ben has followed his career since the years he spent bussing tables at a diner in Las Vegas where his most popular movie once filmed a scene. When Jack Whitlock is suddenly embroiled in a sex scandal, Ben begins his pursuit, eager for both a big paycheck and a chance to be close to the elusive star. Along the way, he is haunted by mistakes from his past: the photos he took of a pop star that have led to death threats, the ghost of his failed relationship with a burlesque dancer named Ellory, and his abandoned dream of being a wildlife photographer. Searing and propulsive, Close Relationships with Strangers is a behind the lens tour-de-force through the streets of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the desert in between, as readers follow Ben, unrelenting, obsessive, and wry, on a quest that will lead either to his redemption or demise.
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The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
by Brigitte Knightley
The stakes are high, the love is forbidden, and the slow burn turns steamy in this swoony, witty, and heart-stoppingly romantic sequel to instant New York Times bestseller The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy. This stunning hardcover features a cover with foil, beautifully designed endpapers, and a black-and-white interior map Osric is a member of the Fyren Order, a guild of assassins who gleefully murder for money. Aurienne is a Haelan, a scholar-healer whose Order's motto is Harm to none. Clear-cut absolutes separate them: good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark . . . Until they don't. When Osric first bribed Aurienne to heal him, he never imagined those lines would begin to blur. But every healing session draws them closer together. He finds himself developing unwanted feelings for Aurienne as her capable hands heal his body--and his heart. Aurienne's perfect life has been flung into chaos in the form of a devastatingly handsome assassin. She should be in her research lab, not illicitly healing a Fyren every full moon--nor wrestling an attraction to him that threatens to slip into something else. Things go superbly sideways when Osric and Aurienne discover more about the deadly Pox deliberately unleashed through the Tendoms. The plague may be the work of another Order--an Order far nastier than either of them can handle. As the lines between Osric and Aurienne continue to blur, the balance between peace and war, and love and hate, trembles, shifts, and hinges on a heartbeat.
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Miss Bates: Emma Revisited: A Novel
by Catherine Cliff
A daring re-imagining of an Austen classic from the unflinching viewpoint of the misunderstood Miss Bates. Henrietta Bates, the iconic bore of Austen's Emma, is the opposite of handsome, clever, and rich Emma: she is plain, ill-educated, and impoverished. An unmarried woman of quite a different order from that novel's proudly single heroine, she is an object of scorn and pity, whose survival depends upon the generosity of her neighbors which she barters for with an unrelenting shower of banal and grateful chatter. But what if the woman we see in Emma were actually deliberately assuming a role, donning a mask, as a means of managing an untenable situation? What if there was a world of difference between her inward and outward voice? What would the Woodhouses's Highbury look like from her perspective? Miss Bates by Catherine Cliff imagines answers to these questions as it chronicles Henrietta Bates's unexpected and, at times, violent life, navigating a world with no ready-made opportunities, where the stakes are of the highest order. In a debut that is by turns comedic, tragic, startling, and altogether brilliant, Miss Bates turns Austen's poignant and ridiculous side character into a feminist force who understands innately the life she has been dealt and how to slyly play it to her advantage. This is no marriage plot; it is a spinster plot. Or maybe, the spinster's plot.
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The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution
by Jesse Wegman
New York Times journalist Jesse Wegman tells the story of James Wilson, a Founding Father whose bold vision shaped American democracy but whose legacy was lost to scandal. As a young lawyer, James Wilson made a celebrated case for American independence in an essay that inspired the famous words We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. He wrote the first draft of the Constitution and, along with the more famous James Madison, played perhaps the essential role in its ultimate creation. Wilson believed that the people are the ultimate source of all power. He argued successfully for a strong central government and a powerful presidency, and fought unsuccessfully for a direct vote for the president and the Senate. Appointed as a justice to the first Supreme Court, he was later brought down by reckless land speculation and died of malaria in the back room of a North Carolina tavern while hiding from his creditors. Instead of being remembered as one of the nation's great political thinkers, Wilson was virtually written out of history. But in The Lost Founder, Wegman brings to life the most prescient of the earliest patriots and makes a convincing argument that scandal should not diminish the life and impact of a brilliant, complicated man whose vision for his country could not be more relevant today.
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Oops...That's Illegal!: A Handbook for the Wildly Curious (and the Accidental Outlaw)
by Mike Mandell
From the popular creator of @LawByMike, a hilarious guide to all your legal questions--from the obscure to the downright absurd. Could you be arrested if you let your kids have a few sips of wine with dinner? Is it illegal to lie on your dating profile? Can a python be an emotional support animal? Most people don't know the majority of our country's laws, so they don't know how to avoid breaking them, what their actual rights are, or when they can seek legal recourse. Lawyer Mike Mandell is here to change that, by answering your most burning legal questions ... and some you didn't even know you had Oops... That's Illegal is a book of legal insight from a practicing lawyer who's seen it all. Using the same light-heartedness and humor that made his social account @LawByMike so popular, Mandell covers a wide range of topics from police encounters (Is it illegal to do a U-turn at a DUI checkpoint?) to party fouls (What's the penalty for streaking?) to legal disputes (Can I sue my own lawyer for doing a bad job?). Funny, informative, and sprinkled with little-known legal facts throughout, Oops... That's Illegal is sure to help even the most upstanding citizens when they come face-to-face with their next legal dilemma.
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Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith
by J. D. Vance
"[A]n intimate account of why Vice President JD Vance strayed from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith. Communion is a spiritual exploration of what it means to be a Christian in all the seasons of life JD Vance has experienced -- as a child, a young man, a husband, a father, and a leader. Picking up in some ways where Hillbilly Elegy left off, Communion recounts how Vance's pursuit of material privileges ultimately led him into a secular wilderness. Communion reveals how Vance regained his faith and discusses his conversion to Catholicism, how his faith guides his work in public life, and how it shapes his thoughts about the future."
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You Won't Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
by Rachel Aviv
A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters, by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves You Won't Get Free of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other and for themselves. Rachel Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in seven essays, six originally published in The New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book. I wrote some of these stories feeling, existentially, like a daughter, and now I have returned to them with a different identification, Aviv writes. It was as if I had failed to see the drama on the mother's side, too--her particular longings and humiliations and needs. Aviv writes about one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people's children. In the final story, a daughter's traumatic experience is erased by her family, only to be recast by her mother, the writer Alice Munro, in stories celebrated around the world. You Won't Get Free of It is an astonishing exploration of the competing dynamics of knowing and unknowing, recognition and refusal, that shape our most foundational relationship. Illuminating ineffable registers of experience, Aviv reckons with the way that disowned knowledge forms and deforms families and lives.
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Byron Public Library District
100 S. Washington St.
Byron, Illinois 61010
(815) 234-5107byronlibrary.org |
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